The subjects of these dissolutions were usually small and poor Benedictine or Augustinian communities ( especially those of women ) with few powerful friends ; the great abbeys and orders exempt from diocesan supervision such as the Cistercians were unaffected.

Scott then built additions to the house and made it into a mansion, building into the walls many sculptured stones from ruined castles and abbeys of Scotland.

The city grew from several nuclei, the abbeys and a commercial centre.

John simply tightened his existing measures and accrued significant sums from the income of vacant sees and abbeys: one 1213 estimate, for example, suggested the church had lost an estimated 100, 000 marks ( equivalent to £ 66, 666 at the time ) to John.

At the time, Henry had been seizing church lands from abbeys and monasteries.

He felt himself so safe that he interfered autocratically with the management of the church, forbade the bishops to visit Rome, made appointments to bishoprics and abbeys, and showed little anxiety when the pope lectured him on the different principles which he had as to the relationship of spiritual and temporal powers, or when he prohibited him from commerce or commanded him to acknowledge himself a vassal of the apostolic chair.

In 1891 certain abbeys formed a new Order called Trappists ( Ordo Cisterciensium Strictioris Observantiae – OCSO ), which today exists as an order distinct from the Common Observance.

Further, these three Lives are independent of each other, their authors drawing from records ( since lost ) or traditions at the abbeys the saints lived in — St Davids for David, Llancarfan for Cadoc, and Rhuys in Brittany for Gildas.

These monasteries, abbeys, or convents were built in remote locations or were separated from the world by means of a cloister.

A letter of July 22, 1566, from local officials to the Regent, warned that " the scandalous pillage of churches, monasteries and abbeys " was imminent.

Nevertheless, and particularly in areas far from London, the abbeys, convents and priories were centres of hospitality and learning, and everywhere they remained a main source of charity for the old and infirm.

A house of Dominican friars was established at Smithfield, but this was only possible through importing professed religious from Holland and Spain, and Mary's hopes of further refoundations foundered, as she found it very difficult to persuade former monks and nuns to resume the religious life ; consequently schemes for restoring the abbeys at Glastonbury and St Albans failed for lack of volunteers.

* Neath Abbey article from a website on Cistercian abbeys

In brief, the Pirenne Thesis, an early essay in economic history diverging from the narrative history of the 19th century, notes that in the ninth century long-distance trading was at a low ebb ; the only settlements that were not purely agricultural were the ecclesiastical, military and administrative centres that served the feudal ruling classes as fortresses, episcopal seats, abbeys and occasional royal residences of the peripatetic palatium.

The Cloisters, which is near the northern tip of Manhattan island on a hill overlooking the Hudson River, incorporates parts from five French cloistered abbeys.

In this period Tuscany acquired many castles, abbeys and monasteries, while the main towns started again to grow demographically, turning themselves into communes mostly independent from the Holy Roman Empire.

Most surviving art from the Medieval period was religious in focus, often funded by the Church, powerful ecclesiastical individuals such as bishops, communal groups such as abbeys, or wealthy secular patrons.

She was one of four daughters of King Anna of East Anglia ( killed c. 653 ), all of whom eventually retired from secular life and founded abbeys.

# establishments designed as retreats from the world even while often serving also as training stations for the religious ; examples are convents, abbeys, monasteries, and other cloisters.

The most bizarre example of this was probably Fonthill Abbey which actually set out to imitate the mansions which had truly evolved from medieval gothic abbeys following the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 16th century.

The see of Worcester held spiritual jurisdiction over the whole of Gloucestershire not covered by the see of Bath & Wells until the establishment of the sees of Bristol and Gloucester after the reformation, both converted from abbeys.

To Luxeuil came such monks as Conon, abbot of Lérins Abbey to prepare for the reform of his monastery, and Saints Wandregisel and Philibert, founders respectively of the abbeys of Fontenelle and Jumièges in Normandy, who spent years in studying the rule observed in monasteries which derived their origin from Luxeuil.

The papal privilege empowered him to unite several abbeys under his supervision and to receive at Cluny monks from Benedictine abbeys not yet reformed ; the greater number of the reformed monasteries, however, remained independent, and several became centres of reform.

Many of Wales's great castles and other monuments, such as bishop's palaces, historic houses, and ruined abbeys, are now in Cadw's care.

Today the terms " Order of Saint Benedict " and " Benedictine Order " are also used frequently to refer to the total of the independent Benedictine abbeys, thereby giving the wrong impression of a " generalate " or " motherhouse " with jurisdiction over dependent communities.

Generous bequests to important churches and abbeys in Castile had the effect of making the noble churchmen there beneficiaries who would be encouraged by the will to act as a brake on Alfonso VII's ambitions to break it — and yet among the magnates witnessing the will in 1131 there is not a single cleric.

Thenceforth the great abbeys and episcopal seats that Saint Boniface and his successors had established in southwestern Germany had a monopoly on temporal office in Franconia, on a par with the counts of lands further west.

It appears, as is well known in later times, that noble kin groups had their own patron saints, and their own churches or abbeys.

Stephen also had a personal Augustine confessor appointed to him by the Archbishop of Canterbury, who implemented a penitential regime for him, and Stephen encouraged the new order of Cistercians to form abbeys on his estates, winning him additional allies within the church.

The king had been left with only the traditional family domains and a vestige of power over the bishops and abbeys.

Within a short time, the Memleben Abbey had become one of the richest and most influential of the Imperial abbeys.

Although the Imperial city had adopted the Reformation, the town remained the seat of a Roman Catholic bishop and several abbeys.

Great abbeys and priories like Glastonbury, Walsingham, Bury St. Edmunds, and Shaftesbury which had flourished as pilgrimage sites for many centuries, were soon reduced to ruins.

The abbeys of England, Wales and Ireland had been among the greatest landowners and the largest institutions in the kingdoms ; although, by the early 16th century, religious donors increasingly tended to favour parish churches, collegiate churches, university colleges and grammar schools, and these were now the predominant centres for learning and the arts.

All the refounded houses were in properties that had remained in Crown possession ; but, in spite of much prompting, none of Mary's lay supporters would co-operate in returning their holdings of monastic lands to religious use ; while the lay lords in Parliament proved unremittingly hostile, as a revival of the " mitred " abbeys would have returned the House of Lords to having an ecclesiastical majority.

The Benedictine abbey of Vézelay was founded, as many abbeys were, on land that had been a late Roman villa, of Vercellus ( Vercelle becoming Vézelay ).

In the order of the clergy, however, since certain ecclesiastical bodies, e. g. abbeys and chapters of cathedrals, were also summoned to the assembly, and as these bodies, being persons in the moral but not in the physical sense, could not appear in person, their representative had to be chosen by the monks of the convent or the canons of the chapter.

This had caused considerable animosity between Baldwin IV, Count of Flanders and Eustace's father, but when Baldwin IV's son Baldwin V succeeded him in 1035 Eustace I and Baldwin V of Flanders cooperated on several ventures including several charters and in limiting the powers of the Castellan-advocates of several abbeys including the Abbey of Saint Bertin in Flanders.

He had accumulated an immense private fortune ( though nothing compared to the avaricious acquisition of wealth of Concini, Richelieu, Mazarin, Fouquet, and Colbert ) possessing in addition to his see the revenues of seven abbeys.

In the late Middle Ages, when the monastery had been re-founded in its present position, its name was symbolically represented by the visual pun of a mell ( mason's hammer ) and a rose ( symbolising the Virgin Mary, to whom all Cistercian abbeys were dedicated ).

These monastic centres which had the control over various monasteries including former abbeys, were used to control new foundations as well as to obey liturgical and administrative reforms.

At the time, the King had been wiping out and seizing Church lands from abbeys and monasteries.

Henry authorised Norfolk to promise a general pardon and a Parliament to be held at York within a year, as well as a reprieve for the abbeys until the parliament had met.

In the Middle Ages the Premonstratentians even had a few communities where men and women lived in abbeys located next to each other, the communities demonstrating their unity by sharing the church building.